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Q And A Forum With Gale Gand

Gale Gand is the executive pastry chef and partner of the renowned four-star Mobil, five-diamond AAA, Relais & Chateaux Relais-Gourmand restaurant Tru with culinary partner Rick Tramonto. She was recognized in 2001 as Outstanding Pastry Chef of the Year by The James Beard Foundation and Bon Appetite magazine and in 1994 as one of Food & Wine's Top Ten Best New Chefs. Gand has a BFA from RIT and attended culinary school at La Varenne in Paris before opening Trio, Brasserie T and later Tru, which celebrates it's 10th anniversary in 2009. An accomplished cookbook author with six titles to her credit, including her most recent "Chocolate and Vanilla", released in late 2006, she recently finished working on her next cookbook about brunch, due for release in April 2009.

Gand is the host of the long running Food Network's "Sweet Dreams," and has two shows currently in production, "The Heirloom Recipe Project" for PBS and "The Answered Chef", an online educational cooking series at www.AnswersTV.com . She has appeared on "Martha Stewart", "Oprah", "Iron Chef America" and judged the 2008 season of Bravo's hit series "Top Chef". She has her own root beer company and also produces a vanilla cream soda. In the summer of 2008 two of Gand's desserts were featured at the USA House at the Beijing Olympics.

A supporter of sustainable agriculture, eating locally and the environmental movement, Gand is a member of the National Restaurant Association's Conserve Initiative Action Council and forages annually for local ramps and mushrooms with her son for her restaurants. She is involved in many community causes, including Chicago's Green City Market, Art Smith's foundation, Common Threads, which teaches children racial and cultural diversity through the culinary arts and she is teaches pastry and baking after school to children at her son's middle school and daughters' Montessori School.

In 2006, with Tramonto, she founded Cenitare Restaurants, a restaurant management and development company with four concepts at The Westin Chicago North Shore, including Gale's Coffee Bar, Osteria di Tramonto, Tramonto's Steak & Seafood and RT Lounge. Most recently she consulted on and opened an upscale cupcake bakery, MORE, in Chicago. Gale is married to an environmentalist, Jimmy Seidita, has a 12 year old son Gio and 4 year old twins, Ella and Ruby. For more information on Gand, visit www.cenitare.com, www.trurestaurant.com and www.galegand.com.

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